I got ACL and meniscus repair - arthroscopic surgery. The knee has always been healing on schedule. Knee pain was only bad on the 2nd day. However starting the 5th day I got this very painful bruising in mid shin, below where the surgeon did his thing. The skin would closed up before the underlying blood vessels did, and the blood pooled in a large area on the shin. It was weird - very painful to get up on my good leg as blood rushed down. The shin is swollen but not bruise-colored. I went to see on the 3rd day of the shin pain, and my surgeon shrugged and said "some get that", "man up", and "it will go away". Easy for him to say, it was agonizing. It was so bad I would sometimes crawl like a 3-legged dog to the bathroom, and pee sitting down. Needless to say for 5 days it relegated me to the La-Z-Boy.

On the 5th day of this **** severely limiting my mobility, I said "**** this, I'm gonna think out of the box". I started looking for alternative cures for bruising. I googled "how to cure painful shin bruises". I stumbled on a kungfu forum where many extolled virtues of some traditional herbal Chinese liniment. So I found a nearby Chinese herbal store, took some Vicodin, and went there.

Sonofagun, it worked - very well! It smelled just like tincture of Arnica from my childhood, which was used to speed bruise healing. (Turns out you can buy Arnica ointment from GNC and Vitamin Shoppe.)

I'm guessing this Chinese concoction also has an analgesic in it, because when I apply my heat lamp I can't feel the heat as much in the areas on which I rubbed the liniment.

The next morning to test its efficacy I didn't apply it. Pain. I took 2x Tylenol. Pain. Applied the elixir, waited 20 mins. Hot damn, pain free!

The traditional Chinese medicine doctor also recommended I use this sticky roll with Menthol and Camphor in it (like Salonpas or Ben-Gay on a stick-on sheet), after I apply the liniment. I tested not using it, and it seems the liniment it doing most or all of the work.

I noticed that the effect fades some after about 3-4 hours. So regular application is necessary. I just put a tablespoon of it in a shot glass, dip my finger in it, and rub it lightly over the bruised area, let it dry. If I have time, I apply my portable heatlamp for 15 mins.

Here is the stuff:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dit_da_jow

And here is Arnica:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnica

 

I just tore my other ACL today...FML

 

Sorry to hear that.
I'm writing a blog to chronicle my experiences. I will put tips.

For you the most important thing at the moment is RICE - get the joint to heal. And BE VERY CAREFUL with the possibility of dislocating your knee due to the instability from the missing ACL. That will cause further, SERIOUS damage to the cartilage. The knee can be very unstable without an ACL.

 

I think it could be MCL related. The pain isn't very bad and I have movement. It just gives out. I'm not very happy about this, I got to play 2 games this year.

 

"Gives out" = most likely ACL is gone.
Sorry bud.
"Giving out" is dangerous, you could dislocate it very badly and cause further damage. Be careful.
I was lucky my knee was unusually stable for one without an ACL. It never gave out once.

Stretched MCL just = pain.

Get a physical exam and probably an MRI to confirm.

 

I used to live on homemade dit da jow due to injuries I get from practicing martial art. It works great.
Jason, hopefully you'll have a speedy recovery!

 

Glad you found some relief. Arnica is a mainstay in my meds cabinet. Will try to find some of the dit da jow.

 

Be sure it's placed in a glass, not plastic, bottle for you.

 

Will do...thanks for the heads up.

 

*

 

My knee is shot. But i lived through the pain for a few years, was really careful on it and now it's okay.

If i have to walk up 4-5 flights of stairs or push a shopping cart, it will die again.

but im having shoulder issues at the moment...sitting at my desk all day long leaning on my elbow pwnt it.

 

The "giving out" is also a symptom of what caused my recent knee surgery... a torn quadriceps tendon. One way to check that tendon for the most common tear is feel just above both kneecaps with the legs bent some. If the quad tendon is torn you'll probably feel a gap just above the kneecap. Hope it's not a torn quadriceps tendon, they take a LONG time to heal (plus you get about a 12" scar on your leg from the surgery).

I second Jason here.... get an exam and an MRI, some of the things that happen with knees are much harder to fix when you let them go for a while.

Oh and +100 on the dit da jow, I used it for bruises when I was studying martial arts and the stuff really works.

 

I had the same surgery about 2 years ago. The pain was unreal after a few days. Should have dOne more research. Thanks!

 

So many knee injuries! What are you guys doing to cause all this? I feel like I've put my knees under a LOT of stress with no major issues. Guess I'm lucky. So what is getting you guys? Sports? Running?

That's pretty cool with the medicine though, good job taking matters into your own hands. Glad it helped you out, a friend of mine had that same thing happen to him, too bad he didn't know about this.

 

In my case it was a combo hit. One foot slipped going down a spiral stairway into a submarine (Trident boat at work... it was a "Family Day" tour), caught on the next step and my leg flexed with full weight and momentum as I was trying to catch myself. Knee slammed into a handrail support right across the tendon (just above the kneecap) while I had the full load on it, basically guillotined it. Tore the tendon most of the way off, looked like a "U" above the knee in the MRI. You could lay an index finger into the gap where it was torn. To fix it they make about a 12" incision down your leg, drill holes in your kneecap, pull the tendon/muscle back down where they're supposed to be and suture the tendon to the kneecap so it will heal.

I'll add that I finished the tour of the sub AND toured the Nimitz before we left... didn't want to screw up my buddies tour group.

 

+1

I've played ultimate frisbee, softball, and angleball for years and have never damaged my knees. Turned plenty of ankles, jammed fingers, scraped most of the skin off my shins, but never heard the pop in my knees. Knock on wood.

Just started some barefoot running, too. Hoping to further strengthen my feet and ankles to lessen the likelihood of injury.

 

This.

8-5 desk job is killing my body? Weird

 

Fast forward to 15 sec for slow mo. (No, there's no stomach churning bone-breaking or joints going backwards in this vid)

Hard landing with knee nearly straight puts huge stress on ACL. Especially if knee buckles inward briefly like the tennis player in the vid. This is how I popped my ACL, without the inward buckling. I hi-sided an ATV and stopped the roll with a footplant - whole weight of ATV behind it. I heard a pop and knew my knee was toast.



The other, more common way ACL's rupture is due to a torquing on the foot with a blow to the outside of the knee. Very common in soccer, football, and wrestling.

Women are much more prone to ACL rupture due to weak inner quad muscle and "valgus" (yes, it's a scientific term) - slightly knock-kneed thigh and shin bone structure.

There are exercises to change your jump landings to reduce chances of rupturing an ACL.

 

We used to have a guy on our local forum who made his own Jow. He was such a weirdo that we had a hard time taking the product seriously. I wonder if he's still around...

 

Bond,

Did you get your knee checked out?